It is still unknown whether Khoja Nasreddin actually existed. However, if he did live, it would have been in the 13th century and most likely in Turkey (those who disagree are welcome to share their versions in the comments, including the idea that he was from Bukhara). The unproven historical reality of this folklore character has not prevented monuments from being erected in his honor or collections of anecdotes about him from being published. In 2022, the tradition of retelling anecdotes about Nasreddin was even included in the list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
Monuments to Khoja Nasreddin can be found in various cities and countries. One of them appeared in 1979 on Lyabi-Hauz Square in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. The bronze monument was created based on a design by sculptor Yakov Shapiro. It depicts Nasreddin sitting astride his donkey and smiling as he shows a gold coin. According to the anecdote, this coin was obtained from a moneylender who had unexpectedly lost his mind.
According to the anecdote, long ago there lived in Bukhara a moneylender named Jafar. He was so greedy that he even lent money to his relatives at high interest. Jafar could afford to be so brazen thanks to “protection” from the head of the emir’s guard. It is easy to understand why the people of Bukhara disliked the moneylender.
After a long absence, Khoja Nasreddin returned to Bukhara and decided to help the people by taking money away from the moneylender. Pretending to be a foreign healer, Nasreddin promised to rid the moneylender of his physical ailments—Jafar was hunchbacked, lame, and blind in one eye.
According to Khoja Nasreddin’s “course of treatment,” the moneylender was supposed to immerse himself in the deepest hauz in Bukhara and recite a prayer dictated by Nasreddin. On the way to the hauz and then back home, Jafar was required to give one gold coin to every person he met—otherwise, Nasreddin claimed, the treatment would not work.
The moneylender believed Nasreddin and plunged into the water of the Lyabi-Hauz. On the way there and back, he handed out a gold coin to everyone he encountered, emptying his entire pouch of money. Naturally, the “treatment” did not help: he remained hunchbacked, lame, and blind in one eye.
The anecdote about the gold coin and the moneylender is not as well known as the famous phrase suggesting that one should not worry about future problems because “either the donkey will die, or the ruler will pass away.” This phrase comes from an anecdote in Leonid Vasilyevich Solovyov’s 1940 book The Troublemaker and from the film Nasreddin in Bukhara, released in 1943. In that story, however, there is also a third character—Nasreddin himself.
In the book and the film, Nasreddin tells how he once made a bet with the Emir of Bukhara that he would teach his donkey theology so well that the donkey would know it no worse than the emir himself. For this, he needed a purse of gold and twenty years. If he failed to fulfill the terms of the bet, his head was to be cut off. Nasreddin, however, was not particularly afraid of the future execution, reasoning quite logically: “In twenty years, one of the three of us will surely die—either the emir, or the donkey, or I. And then try to figure out who knew theology better!”
Have you ever had your photo taken at the monument to Khoja Nasreddin in Bukhara?